awe, humility, hope and a few other things I might notice

Tag Archives: dilapidated

My husband and I recently returned from 3 weeks of trucking through the south. Most of my new sights were in NC, SC and around Augusta, GA. I wish I could get out more and take pictures on the ground and the really wild places I saw, but here is what I have from our moving (up down and bouncing around mind you) adventures.

Of course we saw a very verysmall portion of these states and all from a roadside
point of view, but my initial impressions were that NC is more prosperous, quaint, more organized, cared for.
SC is a bit wild, isolated in its abandoned aloneness, not in any mean spiritedness.
That said, we did travel through a town that looked quite prosperous and quaint more like NC. I would love to see Charleston some day.

We traveled around Augusta GA, on the border of SC, the Savannah river area. There were entire rows of boarded up houses,
a multitude of shops selling vast quantities of car tires and lots of box stores and industry. We did not get into downtown Augusta or even near its true suburbs.

I loved the wildness of it.

I was surprised by the flatness of it- it was sandy and clay soil and nearly flat like Kansas yet still far from the coast.
There were vast areas of forest, fields, lots of farming (cotton, tobacco, wheat…). We picked up a load of carrots and another of sweet potatoes. We carried down 2 loads of chocolate chips to the Kellogg plant and absorbent pulp to a decimated factory for diapers- they had something like 1200 employees now it is only 60. On the day we delivered we only saw 3 people working. Tons of not only abandoned houses but small and large businesses, buildings, factories, schools, hospitals. I imagined the difficulty of finding good jobs, the importance of an anchor of industry or technology economy, the modest but sometimes rewarding returns of a strong back of agriculture.

The humidity in summer was already discernible and the isolation extreme for us northerners for any kind of extended visit.I could envision a lovely camp on a small pond though, a retreat in spring or fall. The people were friendly, generally speaking, and I never had to open a door for myself. It was quiet and Spring was more like summer as we got farther south. I was exhilarated by the light air and ran and even skipped just for the joy of it.